At some point, the math changes.
When you’re twenty-five, most of your life still lies ahead. There’s time to build a career, raise a family, earn money, travel, pursue your dreams, recover from mistakes, repair relationships, and become the person you hope to be. Even the things you know you should do but keep putting off don’t feel urgent. You’ll get to them eventually. There’s always more time, or at least it feels that way.
Then, somewhere along the journey, often without a specific day marking the transition, you notice that things have changed. The children you raised are adults. Your parents, who once seemed old to you, are aging or already gone. The career you were trying to build has become the one you’ve spent decades building. The young man in old photographs still looks familiar, but he no longer resembles the man you see in the mirror.
Birthdays seem to arrive more quickly. Christmas comes around faster. A decade doesn’t feel like it used to, and questions once reserved for a distant future feel personal. How much longer do I want to work? Have I saved enough? Will my health allow me to do the things I still want to do? Have I loved my wife well? What kind of relationship do I have with my adult children? Have I spent too much of my life working, worrying, accumulating, or trying to prove something?
Eventually, beneath all those questions, a much larger one emerges: What am I supposed to do with the years I have left?
That is the question at the heart of this book. But for a man who follows Jesus Christ, it leads to a more searching question.
A Different Question
Our culture teaches us to think about the second half of life primarily in terms of ourselves. What do I want to do? Where do I want to travel? When can I retire? What experiences do I still want to have? How can I finally enjoy all I’ve worked decades to achieve?
Those aren’t necessarily bad questions. There is nothing inherently wrong with traveling, resting, playing golf, fishing, enjoying grandchildren, or waking up on a Tuesday morning with nowhere to be. These can be wonderful gifts from God, received with gratitude and enjoyed without guilt. But for someone who follows Jesus, there must be a larger question than what we want from the rest of our lives.
What does God want us to do with what remains?
That question shifts the conversation by starting with a truth we can easily forget: our lives do not ultimately belong to us. Our time, money, abilities, experience, wisdom, influence, and opportunities have been entrusted to us for a season. David wrote:
“The earth is the LORD’S, and all it contains, The world, and those who live in it.” — Psalm 24:1 (NASB 2020)
We are stewards of what belongs to God. That means the most important question about our remaining years goes beyond how much we can enjoy or accomplish. We need to ask whether we will faithfully care for and use what He has entrusted to us. That is a very different way to think about the rest of our lives.
You May Have More Than You Think
There is an interesting paradox in growing older: as the years ahead grow fewer, you may have more to give than ever. Think about the man you were at twenty-five. You probably had energy, ambition, dreams, and decades of life stretching ahead. But you didn’t have thirty or forty years of experience. You hadn’t learned nearly as much about what doesn’t work. You hadn’t navigated decades of relationships, career decisions, disappointments, changes, losses, and unexpected turns.
You also hadn’t yet seen God carry you through many of the things you once thought you’d never survive.
Age certainly takes some things from us, and there is no point in pretending otherwise. But the years can also deepen our perspective. We accumulate experience, relationships, skills, stories, and scars. If we have walked with Christ through those years, we have a history of His faithfulness to remember and share. Some of our wisdom came through success. Much of it probably didn’t. Some lessons came through prayer and Scripture; others became clearer through mistakes, consequences, grief, repentance, forgiveness, and the act of getting up one more time.
The question is: what will we do with it all? We can spend decades accumulating wisdom and never pass it down. We can build financial resources without deciding what they are for, develop valuable skills and use them only to make a living, or know hundreds of people while investing deeply in very few. We can repeatedly experience God’s faithfulness and never tell the next generation what He has done.
There are things we have learned that others need. Our opportunity to share them will not last forever.
Don’t Take It with You
You’ve probably heard the old saying, “You can’t take it with you.” We usually think of money and possessions, but there’s another loss worth considering. When a man dies, those around him may lose access to his wisdom, professional knowledge, family stories, and a testimony he never put into words. What he could have shared about marriage, work, parenting, suffering, faith, and life may go untold.
We can start giving those things away while we still have the chance. That changes how I think about legacy.
Legacy is often discussed as if the goal were to ensure people remember us. We want to build something with our name on it, accomplish something significant, or leave evidence that we were here. Yet even legacy can become another form of self-centered ambition. For the follower of Jesus, I believe there is a better definition:
Legacy endures because you were faithful.
Maybe it’s an adult child who walks with Christ, partly because he watched you do the same. Maybe it’s a wife who, after decades of marriage, knows she was deeply and sacrificially loved. Perhaps it’s a younger man who becomes a better husband and father because you invested time in him, or a grandchild who remembers sitting beside you as you prayed. It may be someone who experienced generosity because God had entrusted you with resources.
Perhaps people remember your name. Perhaps they don’t. Jesus is the point. If our remaining years increasingly reflect His character and we love and serve others more selflessly because of Him, then something far more important than our reputation can endure after us. We will not always see what grows from that faithfulness, and we cannot control another person’s response. We can love the people God has placed before us and trust Him with what follows.
Numbering Our Days
Moses prayed:
“So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.” — Psalm 90:12 (NASB 2020)
I’ve come to believe there is profound wisdom in that prayer. Numbering our days doesn’t mean knowing the exact number. It means recognizing that there is a number and letting that truth shape how we live. There will be opportunities to love, apologize, forgive, teach, and serve that won’t come again. We don’t know when those moments will occur, but we can become more attentive to the opportunities we have today.
That reality need not make us fearful. It can make us intentional. If time were unlimited, almost anything could wait. Recognizing its limits helps us decide what deserves our time. We will begin there in Chapter 1.
This Is Not a Retirement Book
You don’t need to be retired to read this book. You don’t even need to be close. Maybe you’re forty-five and beginning to realize the relentless climb doesn’t satisfy you as you expected. Maybe you’re fifty-five and wondering whether the next decade should mirror the last three. Maybe you’re sixty-five and standing at the edge of retirement, or seventy-five and wondering whether God still has meaningful work for you.
The exact age isn’t the point. The realization is. There comes a time when we understand we can’t assume the years ahead will mirror those behind us. That realization can frighten or discourage us, but it can also help us see more clearly what matters and respond with gratitude for the life still ahead.
This book is about faithfulness. We’re going to take an honest inventory of what God has entrusted to us and ask what faithfulness looks like today. We’ll examine ten areas: our walk with Jesus, time, marriage, family, body, work, resources, relationships, wisdom, and influence. Some may be healthy, some neglected, and some may require difficult decisions or even repentance.
Many of the examples on these pages feature husbands, fathers, and grandfathers. If your life has taken a different path, you still belong in this conversation. You may be single, widowed, divorced, childless, or living with circumstances you never anticipated. The purpose is to reflect on the responsibilities and relationships God has given you, not to measure your life against another man’s.
I write as a man, and most directly to men, because that is the life I know from the inside. That choice is not a statement about who matters. If you are a woman reading these pages, or a wife reading alongside her husband, you are welcome here. The call to follow Jesus, to steward what He has entrusted, and to finish faithfully belongs to every believer. I hope much of what follows is useful to you as well.
These pages will offer encouragement because discouragement rarely produces lasting transformation. They will also offer edification because we need more than motivation; we need truth that builds us up. And there will occasionally be correction because encouragement that refuses to confront us isn’t true love. Yet correction is not condemnation.
The gospel does not say, “Get the rest of your life right so God will finally be pleased with you.” Christianity does not offer us a second-half performance plan to earn God’s acceptance. We are saved by grace, stand by grace, and grow by grace. When we fail, grace is there too.
Paul wrote that we are saved by grace through faith, not by works. But he immediately added that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared for us to walk in (Ephesians 2:8–10). The order matters. Grace comes first. Faithfulness follows. We don’t faithfully steward our lives to earn God’s love. Instead, we seek to steward them faithfully because we have received, in Jesus Christ, a love we could never earn.
Our faithfulness is not the basis of our salvation; Christ’s finished work is. We pursue faithfulness because we belong to Him, not to earn His acceptance. The Father has graciously purposed our salvation; the Son has accomplished the saving work we could never do; and the Holy Spirit gives us new life and continues to shape us to reflect Christ (Ephesians 1:3–14).
Because everything else in this book rests on that grace, I want to state it plainly rather than assume it. Scripture says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, NASB 2020). Our deepest problem is not wasted time or misplaced priorities. It is sin, which separates us from the God who made us and leaves us unable to repair that separation on our own. The good news is what God has done about it. Paul summarized the message he had received and passed on as “of first importance”: “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4, NASB 2020).
Jesus began His preaching with a summons: “repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15, NASB 2020). Repentance is turning to God from sin and self-rule; faith receives and rests on Jesus Christ and His saving work. Neither earns salvation. Both are part of our response to the gospel, made possible by God’s grace. Those who come to Him this way are forgiven, made right with God as a gift (Romans 3:24), and given new life by His Spirit.
I have known Jesus for many years, so I do not assume that everyone who picks up a Christian book has trusted Him. If you are unsure where you stand, nothing in the chapters ahead matters more than settling that question. You do not need to complete a plan first. You can turn to Him today, and I encourage you to talk with a pastor or a mature Christian who can open the Scriptures for you.
Jesus > Others > Self
There is one simple order that will guide our discussion throughout this book:
Jesus > Others > Self
Jesus first. Others second. Self last. This is a shorthand for discipleship, not a formula explicitly stated in Scripture. It reminds us who is Lord and how His love turns us toward others. It does not mean self-neglect. Your health, rest, emotional and spiritual well-being, and growth matter. Enjoying God’s gifts with gratitude matters. Putting self last does not mean every request from another person must take precedence over those responsibilities. It means self cannot occupy the throne.
Jesus said:
“If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” — Luke 9:23 (NASB 2020)
Following Him means surrendering our claim to rule our own lives. We see selfless love in His life. He served people who could give Him nothing in return, touched those others avoided, welcomed children, and washed His disciples’ feet. He showed compassion, spoke the truth, forgave, and obeyed His Father. Ultimately, He gave Himself:
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” — Mark 10:45 (NASB 2020)
His death was more than an example of generosity; He gave His life to save us. The love we seek to practice is our response to the love we have received in Him. As we follow Jesus, His character should increasingly shape how we steward what has been entrusted to us.
Paul describes the same posture in his letter to the Philippians:
“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility consider one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” — Philippians 2:3–4 (NASB 2020)
Notice the word merely. Paul does not tell us to have no interests of our own. He tells us that our interests are not the only interests in the room and points to Christ, who humbled Himself for our sake (Philippians 2:5–8). That is the sense in which self comes last in this book: still present, but no longer first.
We cannot produce that kind of love by resolve alone. Scripture calls it the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23), the work of God’s Spirit in those who belong to Christ. The order indicates the direction He is leading us. It is not a ladder we climb by our own strength.
When we talk about marriage, we’ll ask how to love our wives more sacrificially. When we talk about money, we’ll consider how our resources can serve God’s purposes and meet others’ needs. When we talk about work, we’ll ask where the abilities developed over decades might still be useful. When we talk about wisdom, we’ll consider whom we’re helping and how we’re applying what we’ve learned.
When we talk about legacy, we’ll ask a question worth carrying into whatever years remain: Will people see more of Jesus because we were here?
We Are Going to Build Something
I don’t want this to be a book you simply read, agree with, set on a shelf, and forget. As you move through these pages, you’ll create your own Remaining Years Plan. We’ll begin by numbering our days, considering how to handle regret, and examining where our identity rests. Then we’ll use the Entrusted Inventory to honestly assess the ten areas of stewardship we’ve just named.
From there, we’ll determine what matters most, examine what “enough” means, and give attention to our own walk with Jesus before addressing the relationships and responsibilities that demand it. We’ll identify the people we should invest in, the wisdom we can pass down, and the things we should stop pursuing. We’ll consider where repentance or reconciliation may be needed and where God may be asking us to serve next.
Keep your written responses together as you read, either on these pages or in a notebook. The exercises will help you think carefully, and the One Thing sections will help you choose a practical response. The Your Remaining Years Plan sections will compile the decisions you will use again. You do not need to change every area of your life at once. Give each chapter enough attention to identify what faithfulness requires, and begin with the next step you can take responsibly.
At the end of the book, Putting It All Together will help you gather that work into a single plan you can return to and revise as circumstances change. You will identify the people and responsibilities that matter most, the commitments you intend to keep, and the next faithful action you need to take. This book will provide what you need to assemble that plan.
Your answers won’t look exactly like mine. They shouldn’t. God hasn’t entrusted the same things to each of us. In Jesus’ parable of the talents, a master entrusts different amounts of money to his servants and later calls them to account (Matthew 25:14–30). As we consider our stewardship, the question is: what will we do with what has been placed in our hands?
Whatever Remains
I don’t know how many years you have left, nor how many I have. Neither of us receives that information in advance. But today remains. There are people we can love, encouragement we can offer, wisdom we can share, and responsibilities we can faithfully fulfill. There is Scripture we can obey and a Savior we can follow.
Maybe you’ve wasted some years. Maybe you’ve made decisions you deeply regret or spent decades chasing things that matter far less to you now than they once did. Maybe you wish you had been a better husband, father, friend, steward, or follower of Jesus. There is grace for you here as well.
You cannot change the years already spent. You cannot return to twenty-five with the wisdom you have today, undo every mistake, or recover every opportunity. But by the grace of God, you can be faithful with what remains.
We will honestly examine the past without making it our home. We will thank God for the time He has given us and consider what He has entrusted to us. As we move forward, we’ll seek to share what we’ve learned, love more selflessly, serve more freely, and keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.
For however many days God chooses to give us, we will pursue the direction: Jesus > Others > Self. Our desire is to remain faithful for the rest of our lives, no matter what comes.